The house we've just moved into has a condensation problem in the loft. Not surprising really since at some time it's been made just about airtight by packing the 4 inch high gap between the top of the walls and the underside of the roof with a mixture of stones embedded in mortar about 8 inches thick.
It looks as though the simplest cure will be to drill lots of 1 inch holes through the mortar and stones. This is obviously not a task for my conventional B&D hammer drill so I'm using this job to justify treating myself to a new SDS drill which should take this sort of thing in it's stride.
I understand that an SDS bit should have a much longer life than a conventional masonry bit but what I don't know is just how much life. Assuming that I punch 4 holes between each pair of roof timbers I'm going to have over 150 holes to drill. Should I expect to consume a number of expensive long bits in the process or would a single bit survive this sort of treatment?
I'm still trying to decide on which machine to buy. The Makita HR2450 at
120 quid from Screwfix is tempting and has had favourable mention here. On the other hand the Bosch PBH2200RE with a slightly lower spec at 90 quid from Argos looks good value. Detailed specs for the Bosch PBH2200RE are hard to find (it doesn't even exist on the Bosch web site) but from what I've found so far I suspect that (unlike the Makita) it might not have a safety clutch. Could anyone confirm if this is the case or not, or even suggest any alternative machine in this price range with rotation stop, hammer stop, safety clutch and 20-25mm drilling capacity in concrete?